Mars Astrobiology: Recent Status and Progress - Planetary Exploration and Science: Recent Results and Advances - page 183

Fig. 8.20 The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity showed researchers
interesting internal color in this rock called “Sutton Inlier,” which was broken by the rover driving
over it. The Mastcam took this image during the 174th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on
Mars. The rock is about 12 cm (5 in.) wide at the end closest to the camera. This view is calibrated
to estimate “natural” color or approximately what the colors would look like if we were to view
the scene ourselves on Mars. The inside of the rock, which is in the “Yellowknife Bay” area of
Gale Crater, is much less red than typical Martian dust and rock surfaces, with a color verging on
grayish to bluish. As revealed by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity's
arm, the sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay likely formed when original basaltic rocks were
broken into fragments, transported, and redeposited as sedimentary particles and mineralogically
altered by exposure to water. This rock appears to be a carbonatic rock ( http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/
msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5152 - NASA/JPL-Caltech, January 31, 2013)
Fig. 8.21 First target, “Coronation” rock, on Mars of the ChemCam laser analyzer on the
Curiosity rover ( http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4541 - NASA/JPL-
Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP, August 19, 2012)